A beautiful, heartaching read, and one I wished I read when I was younger. Saenz does a fantastic job of capturing the feeling of being a teenager that's expressed very well through the minimalist writing style--both the aching loneliness and confusion of coming into yourself, but it's also run through with an undercurrent of nostalgia of feeling like the whole world is waiting for you, too.

Saenz does a lovely job of crafting Ari and Dante as characters, Ari especially. I got a wonderful sense of his loneliness, his complicated relationship with his parents and family history that fuels his anger, his Mexican heritage, his confusion over his sexuality, and his love for Dante.

I especially appreciated the way Saenz writes Ari and Dante's parents; the family dynamic was one of my favourite parts of the book. It's so refreshing to see kind, wonderful, and supportive Latinx parents in a popular piece of media like Aristotle and Dante. Ari and Dante's parents were flawed, but they had reasons to be, and they were kind and loving and tried their best to be positive influences for their children. The banter between Ari and his mother especially warmed my heart, and it felt so organic to the interactions between a teenage boy and his mother. And the fact that neither of the two sets of parents was homophobic was also such a welcome change, to the point where instead of the classic dramatic coming out scene,

Spoiler

Ari's parents had to sit him down at the end and tell HIM he was gay, 10/10

I feel like Latinx parents in media often fall into the same stereotypes, always the domineering, Catholic and conservative mother who burns or destroys her child's diary in one scene, and the meeker, quiet, but emotionally distant father. Such family archetypes appeared in two Latinx books I read last year, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez and The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, to the point I could barely distinguish between the protagonists' parents represented in those two novels. And while I enjoyed both novels and acknowledge they are written by Latinx authors, and that this can be the experience for many Latinx youth, it's worth recognising how these things can fall into harmful stereotypes if they're all the Latinx representation we see. (That was actually a big part of why I liked Clap When You Land better than The Poet X actually). So that was a wonderfully refreshing change to see here.

Overall, this was a lovely book, that maybe had more of a quiet influence on me than I first realised, and I am so happy I read it.